Dungeons & Dragons Worlds

Worlds from this series of games:

  • Abeir-Toril:  Toril interactive globe
    –The premise is that, long ago, planet Earth and the world of the Forgotten Realms (originally called Toril, then retconned to Abeir-Toril before it was split into 2 nearly-identical worlds, 1 for humans and other non-elementals, and the 2nd world for the elemental/primordial beings/races who had nearly wiped out the lesser/newer/humanoid ones more than once) were more closely connected. As time passed, the inhabitants of Earth had mostly forgotten about the existence of that other world.
  • Athas
  • Azeroth
  • Eberron
  • Krynn
  • Mystara
  • Oerth
  • Pharagos: The Battleground

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Dimensions/Realms Which May or May Not Be Planets:

 

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Notes:

  • The title says it all; this group of realms has, more than any other, the most dungeons and dragons. All other groups of realms (beyond D&D ones) have at least some of one or the other, but most dungeons and ancient structures are in ruins or completely destroyed by the modern Age. Even the planet of the greatest dragons, Dragonhome, does not have as many dragons, nor really any dungeons at all.
  • There is no “D&D World”; there is a “D&D Multiverse” that consists of countless worlds, maybe 15-16 of which are “official” campaign settings that have had game supplements published about them over the years, and 11 of those have had at least one novel published about them at some point.
  • The most popular campaign setting by far is the Forgotten Realms (planet Toril), which is often what people think of as the “default” setting these days. About half of all D&D novels are set in the Forgotten Realms, about a quarter are set in the Dragonlance setting (planet Krynn), and the last quarter is split between everything else.
  • For the Forgotten Realms, the most popular and longest-running series are the books that focus on the character of Drizzt Do’Urden by RA Salvatore. The first of these published is The Crystal Shard, though the fourth book, Homeland is the first chronologically. But FR is very much a “place, not a story”, it’s a setting in which stories take place, not a single cohesive narrative, so picking up the first book in any series, or any stand-alone book, will probably be fine.
  • Dragonlance is a different animal. Of all of D&D’s settings, it is the one with the strongest central narrative. There is a group of “core” books (pretty much anything written by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman), and everything else is more ancillary to various degrees. The first “core” Dragonlance book, and indeed the first Dragonlance book published, is Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
  • The other campaign settings that have novels based in them, and which you may be interested in looking into are:
    Birthright
    Dark Sun
    Eberron
    Greyhawk
    Mystara
    Points of Light
    Planescape
    Ravenloft
    Spelljammer
  • Bear in mind that a lot of these books are older and long out of print, they may be hard to find, but can pop up for cheap in used bookstores. About seven years ago, they nearly stopped publication of these books completely. Right now, the only new ones being produced are a semi-annual Drizzt book by Salvatore, and more recently, a new Dragonlance trilogy by Weis and Hickman (two of the the three now published).
  • Crystal Shard and Dragons of Autumn Twilight started me on my D&D Fantasy voyage. They are both good starting points into very good series…”

 

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Also see:

  • lore playlist, starting with “D&D Lore:  Forgotten Realms History – Volume 1 (Dawn War)”
    –note:  loved this line/quote in these lore vids: “where gods play Chess with the stars”
    –Pardon the broken-record typical condescension and wrong assumptions of (from) the new, ignorant, insecure, blame-shifting, and far-removed-from-the-ancients… modern humans; the maker of these lore videos, like the writers of the lore, assumed the ancients were primitive and disCovered magic/things, when really it was only the moderns who had to learn/rediscover things, the ancients not rising to power, but being Born/creAted powerful and wise, knowing All back then, being so closely descended from the gods whose essence was to cause reality to be/do whatever they foresaw/wanted.  Discovering magic/tech’ started happening only after cataclysms “reset” civilization/s / races / worlds.

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